Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Staunton, October 31 – Half of the
increase in investment in the North Caucasus Moscow is promoting to pacify that
unsettled region has gone to the predominantly ethnic Russian Stavropol Kray,
whereas “the size of investments in the national republics” has been “more
modest,” Presidential Plenipotentiary Aleksandr Khloponin says.

Speaking to a Kislovodsk forum of
major companies operating in his North Caucasus Federal District last Saturday,
Khloponin said that investment in the district had increased by 113 percent
during the first half of this year compared to a year ago and that as a result
unemployment had fallen (expert.ru/2012/10/30/rabota-nad-kavkazskimi-oshibkami/?n=66995).

But he acknowledged that much of
this new investment had gone into the predominantly Russian Stavropol kray
rather than the more unstable non-Russian republics and that this “inequality”
was a matter of concern given that Moscow’s strategy is to promote economic
growth there to undercut the appeal of those fighting against it.

In addition to the imbalance between investments
in Stavropol and those in the non-Russian republics, Khloponin identified five
other problems with the pattern of investment.First, he said the Corporation for the Development of the North Caucasus
have failed to reach out and support small and mid-sized companies, thus limiting
the corporation’s impact.

Second, the presidential
plenipotentiary pointed to “choke points” in the financial system, including
what he described as “the still not too effective” government program which
provides state guarantees to investors prepared to develop
government-identified priority projects in the North Caucasus Federal District.

Third, Khloponin noted “the
passivity of local elites in the district, in the first instance, those in the
organs of self-administration which are accustomed to using their own budgetary
funds instead of working with investors.

Fourth, he said that in his region, “the
system of higher education has been seriously discredited” despite the survival
of what he described as “a number of good higher educational institutions in
the region.”

Khloponin called for “the closure of
ineffective regional branches of higher educational institutions of the
capital, the centralization of the system of higher education, and the
formation of a new ‘mark of quality’ on the foundation of the recently
established North Caucasus Federal University.”

And fifth, the Presidential
Plenipotentiary pointed to the impact of “the negative image of the region in
the media,” an image which reduces its attractiveness as a place for
investment.“Today,” he said, “Italian
entrepreneurs are investing more in the North Caucasus than are Russian
investors. This means that we do not
believe in ourselves and our potential.”

Staunton, October 31 – Mikhail
Prokhorov’s suggestion last weekend that Moscow disband the non-Russian
republics reflects Kremlin thinking, according to a Russian nationalist
commentator. But doing so won’t be easy, he continues, because even Stalin who
understood the threat from such republics was not able to dispense with them.

On the “Svobodnaya Pressa” portal
yesterday Viktor Alksnis says that the proposal Prokhorov made in fact has been
“widely discussed at a minimum for the last 25 years” and by many who
understand the nature of the problem far better than the Civic Platform
billionaire (svpressa.ru/society/article/60252/).

Prokhorov,
Alksnis continues, “evidently poorly studied the history of Russia in school
because he doesn’t know that long before the appearance of the ‘Lenin-Stalin’
Soviet Union there were such unique ‘national subjects of the empire’ within
the Russian Empire as the Grand Duchy of Finland, the Kingdom of Poland and the
Bukharan and Khivan khanates.”

According to the Russian nationalist
commentary, Prokhorov’s proposal which has sparked so much discussion in the
media was likely “recommended to him from behind the Kremlin wall” where “the
Kremlin has decided again to take up the reform of the state arrangements of
Russia.”

That is because, Alksnis continues,
the occupants of the Kremlin “understand perfectly the danger of the national
principle of the construction of the state and that it will inevitably lead the
country to collapse.” Ethnic federations routinely fail, he continues;
non-ethnic territorial ones have a greater capacity to survive.

Today’s Russian Federation, he
continues, “inherited from the Russian Empire and Soviet Union all those
destructive ‘illnesses’ which will make its existence as a single state
impossible already in the not distant future.”

Among those “illnesses” are the
division of the country its “first class” subjects, the republics, and “second
class” ones, the oblasts and krays, and the “de facto” support for the
principle that members of the titular nationality have greater rights than
others, regardless of what the Constitution says.

Anyone who thinks this is not the
case should ask himself whether he thinks an ethnic Russian could head Chechnya
or Bashkiria or Tataria. “Theoretically, yes, he could. But we all understand
that in fact this is impossible.” And the same thing is true with “the majority
of leading posts in the national republics.”

That situation gives rise to the
sense among members of the titular nationality that their ethnicity alone gives
them the right to aspire to membership in the UN or NATO, Alksnis says. “And
why not? For if the Georigans and Latvians can, then why can’t we,” thenon-Russians asks.

Alksnis suggests considering the
case of Bashkira.“By the way, why
should we today call this republic Bashkortostan? He asks. Russians don’t call
Britain or Germany the way the British and Germans do, so why should they be
forced to call the land of the Bashkirs Bashkortostan in the name of “respect.”

And he continues by asking
rhetorically“why have been manifested
open hostility to the Estonia people and refusing to write the word ‘Tallin’
with two ‘n’s’ at the end when in Estonian, that work is written Tallinn? And
why up to now [is there still a controvery over whether] to write ‘in Ukraine’
or ‘on Ukraine’?”

Focusing on Bashkiria, Alksnis notes
that at the end of the Soviet period, the share of official positions occupied
by Bashkirs was roughly the same as their percentage in the population” but now
the share of Bashkirs in office has more than doubled.”And that republic is far from the worst in
this respect.

“If someone says this is normal,”
the Russian nationalist writer and activist says, he “would respond that such
things speak about an extremely unfavorable situation in nationality relations
and that in Bashkiria at an official level the principle of the priority of the
indigenous nationality, which contradicts the Constitution of Russia is being
realized and is leading to the collapse of the country.”

Because this situation obtains in
practically all non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation, he says, “national
elites and national administrative cadres are being created who are ready to go
to the next step, to an exit from Russia and to the construction of
[independent] national states.”

Most of these people are currently “afraid
to take that step because the defeat of the Chechen separatists in the second
Chechen war is still fresh in their memories.”But despite that, these elites “are ready and simply waiting a suitable
moment” to act. And that means that “Russia faces severe tests” in the near
future.

“The only way to avoid” this threat
to the existence of the country is to shift away “from the national-territorial
principle of the construction of our state to the territorial one,”a shift
where the “borders among the subjects of Russia” would be like “the lines which
form the borders of the states in the US.”

Taking this absolutely necessary
step, Alksnis concludes, will be “hyper-difficult,” noting that “even I.V.
Stalin, at the height of his powers in the post-war years, did not take the
risk of doing away with the sovereignty of the union republics – even though he
recognized very well all the danger of this sovereignty.”

“But there is no other path,” he
concludes. “Otherwise the collapse of Russia is ahead of us.”

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Staunton, October 30 – Because of
his personal authoritarianism and destruction of democratic institutions,
commentator Viktor Shenderovich says, Russian President Vladimir Putin has
destroyed the chance that Russia can evolve toward a better future and thus set
the stage for a radical break with him at some point in the future.

In an interview carried today on
URA.ru, Shenderovich says that the recent report of the Center for Strategic
Processes showing Putin to have lost support does not mean that Putin will go
because the Russian president doesn’t want to and no institution or person
around him has the power to force the issue (www.ura.ru/content/svrd/29-10-2012/articles/1036258587.html).

Alfed Kokh, Shenderovich recalls in
support of this conclusion, once wrote that people near the Kremlin had come up
with a program that would allow for “the gradual and soft departure of Putin
from power, but everything had concluded in a very funny way: no individual
could be found who would agree to present this program to Vladimir
Vladimirovich.”

Putin’s support in the country has
really fallen, in part because so many saw him as a desirable change from Boris
Yeltsin but even more because “over the past 13 years he has been able to show
his true self, his true goals, intentions and methods.And today, of course, there is a call for
renewal.”

“But the dramatic nature of the situation,”
Shenderovich argues, “consists in the fact that changing the situation by
evolutionary means is already impossible” because “these institutions have been
destroyed by Putin with the silent agreement of society itself.”And it is important to remember that
sociology is “not represented” anywhere in the organs of power.

Putin doesn’t want to give up power,
and he won’t been encouraged to do so by offering him protection against
prosecution as Putin did for Yeltsin, the commentator says. The current Russian
president is simply not interested in that. Moreover, he doesn’t think he needs
to be, given his ability to mobilize those who get money from the budget and
the siloviki.

But the kind of “stability” he offers,
Shenderovich continues, “is the classic stability of authoritarian regimes,
which last and last and then all at once fall.In Soviet times, too, everything was under control and with the help of the
party, the special services, and the media. But in the course of a couple of
years, everything crumbled away.”

The danger is that while Putin and
his regime are thundering against the legitimate demands of the civilized
opposition, the Russian Federation is not prepared for the consequences of the
fall of the price of oil or some action by the United States that will leave the
country in the lurch.

When that happens, “it will turn out
that we are simmpply an enormous territory filled up with oil and gas no one
needs, that it is simple for others to do without us. The budget will then
collapse … and we will not be able to do anything because of the incapacity of
the state to fulfill its social obligations.”

Then the Kremlin will “encounter not
the Bykovs, Kasparovs or Novodvorskayas but with an entirely different public,
which has radically different mean of resolving social-political problems.”
Then the populists will appear which will “propose the simplest ,that is the
most bloody and therefore attractive,” ideas of the left and the nationalists.

“Russia has passed this way many
times before,” Shenderovich says, but Putin and his entourage have a poor
understanding of history.

That should not surprise anyone
familiar with Putin. “After all, he isn’t from a philosophy faculty … but from
the Higher School of the KGB.” That is where he got his “black and white”
picture of reality, one that sees “any compromise as a manifestation of
weakness.”And so unlike a democratic
leader, he has no intention or interest in pursuing one.

In this situation, society needs to restore
what democratic institutions it can, Shenderovich says, and in this sense, the
elections to the Coordinating Council of the opposition are useful because “for
the first time in the course of 15 years, Russians are experiencing “honest
elections with equal chances for all participants.”

This is not the revolutionary act
some believe, Shenderovich continues.“Revolution
is the overthrow of legitimate power and the violation of the law.” But in
Russia now, Putin is the revolutionary” because like Stalin he has suspended
the constitution.Those who oppose him
are thus counter-revolutionaries who seek to restore the rule of law.

That is essential, he says, because “the
only common denominator which can be found for Chukotka, Kalmykia, the Caucasus,
Moscow and Bryansk are human rights and respect for the individual’s worth.
This is the American path, the federal path, which in Connecticut work one set
of laws and in Texas another, just as it ought to be” in Russia.

But getting there won’t be easy or
evolutionary, Shenderovich concludes, because of Putin’s authoritarian
approach.And he cites the remark of the
writer Grigory Gorin, who having heard about Putin’s vaunted “power vertical,” said
that “Russia is a horizontal country” and the only way to preserve the country
is to respect human rights.

Staunton, October 30 – The idea of
the Commonwealth of Independent States, Kazakh writer and diplomat Olzhas
Suleymenov says, was “not bad,” but it suffered, like many of the projects of
the perestroika period, from “the lack of a well-thought-out plan” and thus has
proved to be a continuing act of improvisation.

In an interview carried in today’s “Nezavisimaya
gazeta,” Suleymenov who attracted international attention and Soviet attack for
his “Az i Ya” and who now serves as Kazakhstan’s permanent representative to
UNESCO, says that outcome disappoints but does not surprise him (www.ng.ru/community/2012-10-30/11_result.html?mpril).

Suleymenov
recalls that he told both Mikhail Gorbachev and Aleksandr Yakovlev at the time
that the peoples of the Soviet Union were “entering perestroika without a clear
program and without perspective.We knew
only that Soviet power as it had become clear was bad. But was it necessary to
destroy everything?”

Clearly,
the poet-diplomat says, it was not. Rather what was needed was to think through
the entire system and recognize what was worth saving and how to ensure that
the society did not end up without ideals as is the case now.“People of my generation,” he says, “must
think about what to say to the new generation deprived of our principles,
ideals and worldview.”

In
today’s post-Soviet states what is most important for most people is “personal
success and wealth, and the interests of the collective and the state stand in
last place.” Indeed, Suleymenov laments, the words “Ask not what your country
can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” belong “not to a
socialist but to American President Kennedy.”

“This
is an ideology which we do not have today,” he continues.

In
the 1980s, Suleymenov argues, “at the start of perestroika the possibility
existed to influence the situation.” But today, he says, “I see not only the
mistakes of other people but also the mistakes of our entire generation,”
mistakes that make todays results anything but “unexpected.”

“Already
in those years it was clear that everything was moving not in the direction it
should. And now, not one of the former republics of the USSR feels itself to be
a reliable bulwark for future generations,” Suleymenov suggests, noting that he
is currently writing a small book directed at young people that is intended to
influence the future.

Suleymenov
told “Nezavisimaya gazeta” that he grew up in the difficult war years and was
struck both by the Soviet system’s publication of German poetry at the time of
the German invasion and the deportations of whole nations from the North
Caucasus to Central Asia, an act he saw and in June 1989 led the USSR Supreme
Soviet campaign to denounce.

The Kazakh writer noted that his
priorities have shifted over time, recalling that in the introduction to his
book retelling the Tale of Igor’s Host from an alternative position, it was
necessary for him to combine in himself “an Islamic specialist, a Turkologist,
a poet, a historian and a linguist.”

Today, Suleymenov concluded, he is focusing
on etymology, a field which should involve those who “feel the word poetically.”To that end, he says he is “trying to
generalize the results of his many years of work into a new conception of
linguistics,” an effort that will represent both a return to his roots and a
contribution to the future.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Staunton, October 29 – The integration
of all or part of the post-Soviet space under Moscow’s leadership is impossible
unless or until the Russian Federation overcomes its own “imperial” nature at
home and treats all of Russia’s republics and regions equally and with respect,
according to a Ukrainian political analyst.

But despite Vitaly Pornikov’s
warning that “no real union of Ukraine and Russia will be possible until the
Russian state overcomes its imperial complex,” some Russian politicians and Russians
in the republics are moving in exactly the opposite direction, seeking to make
Russia more “imperial” and more unattractive to non-Russians both within and
beyond its borders.

“Today,” Portnikov says, “there
exists the most serious lack of understanding among the citizens of Russia
themselves. Because for an individual who comes from Moscowfrom Makhachkala,
Grozny or even Kazan, this is his capital in which he completely naturally may
behave as at home” (www.mesoeurasia.org/archives/11745
).

“But for a
Muscovite of Russian origin, this individual is a guest who must take into
consideration the views of the Muscovite about home and traditions.”And that in turn, the Ukrainian analyst says,
contributes to “the most serious dissonance, because beyond any doubt, the
capital of a Daghestani is Makhachkala, the capital of a Tatar, Kazan, and the
capital for a Chechen, Grozny.”

Moscow for all these groups is “the
capital for those who live in central Russia and [ethnic] Russian regions of
the country.This is normal and natural,
but no one wants to say this aloud, because for this, it would be necessary to
transform the Russian Federation into a union of state formations,” something
Moscow’s leaders are not willing to contemplate.

Unless that happens, the Russian
Federation will continue to alienate not only non-Russians living within its
borders but also the non-Russian countries around its borders.And ultimately, the failure of the Russian
Federation to become itself “a union of state formations” will lead “sooner or
later” to the undermining of Russian statehood.

However that may be, some Russian
politicians and some ethnic Russians appear committed to moving in the opposite
direction.On Saturday, Mikhail
Prokhorov, the billionaire behind the Civic Platform, called for the abolition
of the non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation (vz.ru/politics/2012/10/27/604568.html).

“The Stalinist
and Leninist system of dividing [Russia] into national republics,” he said, “is
ineffective in the 21st century.” Consequently, it should be
abolished even if it requires, as would clearly be the case, “changes of the
Constitution and the radical change of the budgetary system.”

Meanwhile, two other groups in
Russia attacked that country’scurrent system of ethno-federalism. A survey
found that Muscovites “do not want to pay taxes” for other parts of the
country, the other side of the coin of regional objections to Moscow’s control
of their lives (argumenti.ru/society/2012/10/210306).

And
more seriously, groups of ethnic Russians in non-Russian regions of the Middle
Volga have organized to protest requirements that their children learn the
language of the titular nationality, something leaves them with less time to
study the Russian language they need more generally (u7a.ru/articles/society/4202and www.regnum.ru/news/1586710.html).